Filed under: Posts by John, Writing | Tags: Burnside Writers Collective, Muppets, Portland, Relevant, Writing
Portland, OR :: So, I’ve had a lot going on these last few weeks. Jordan and I relaunched the main site for Burnside. I am writing a longish profile of an author for the January/February issue of Relevant, along with two short book reviews. I also signed a contract recently (with two co-authors) to write a book with a title I can’t tell you on a topic I can’t divulge for a publisher who will remain anonymous. All this on top of grant writing, which has been sporadic.
The manuscript for the book is due at the end of February, just before Kate and Molly and I head east. The profile and the book reviews will be done next week. I will have a few other assignments for the month of November, but nothing major. I should soon be able to settle back into a routine of writing for On the Narrow Road.
I appreciate Kate’s posts. She is picking up the slack on the blog, as at home, so I can get all my writing done. Thank you, sweetheart.
In other news, it’s good to be back in Portland for the evening, sitting next to Dave on our bench at 39th and Sandy Starbucks, heckling the baristas (Natalie and Ashley) like Statler and Waldorf in the Muppets. I’m going to Jon R.’s house later for a party sponsored by Tostino’s (Pizza Rolls and nacho cheese) and farewell butt-kicking in Halo.
Filed under: Books, Home, Posts by John | Tags: Books, Dave, Libby, Portland
Portland, OR :: It’s hard to believe that in just eight days the slug-line for these posts won’t say “Portland, OR.” While we will spend the month of October in Salem, just 45 minutes south of Portland and no further from the Pacific Ocean; and while the bulk of the OTNR project won’t begin until November when we travel down to California (I want the project to end in Oregon, rather than start there) – I am already homesick. I pretend that when we get back next fall we will just jump right back into life, but it can’t be that way. We’ll be strangers in our own city, at least for a while.
The more practical matter at hand is packing. I’m so busy with grants and my writing projects that Kate gave me just one responsibility – to pack my books – and a firm deadline: the end of August. Into the third week of September and my books are only half-packed. The issue is that I have been hand-entering the ISBN of every one of my estimated 1,000 books into a program called Bookpedia on my computer. “Very monk-like,” Dave says. And it’s true. I told the story in an earlier post about the monk who sold his copy of the Gospels and gave the money to the poor. Books may be my final test of salvation. I think they are an anchor for me, but they may also be dead weight. I have 200 books set aside to bring with me on this trip. Libby jokes that we will need to buy a second trailer just to carry them all.
Filed under: About OTNR, Posts by John | Tags: Bruce Chatwin, California, Nebraska, Oregon, Origins of the Project, Portland, Songlines, Transportation
Portland, OR :: It bothers me that I haven’t been able to summarize this project for the “About” page of the blog. No kidding, I wake up every morning worrying over what that might mean. I wrote a little in a previous post about what the project is not, but hardly anything about what it is.
When I am asked in person to describe OTNR, I ramble awkwardly for five minutes. I say something about growing up in the evangelical church, and something else about exploring our spiritual heritage; I go on about visiting churches and talking to people along the way, and then, when the person’s eyes glaze over, I say the only thing I know for sure, which is that I don’t know what to expect – that the the project will be shaped by what we find out there on the road.
“Do you know where you’re going to go?” is another common question. But we don’t really. We hope to spend October with my parents in Keizer, Oregon (just north of Salem), November in northern California, and December in southern California. We’ll spend January and February somewhere on the west coast, though we don’t have definite plans. Then in late February or early March we’ll start from Portland and point our camper van, RV, or trailer east. I’d like to head immediately to Lincoln, Nebraska to visit my old church. Who knows after that. “Do you know where you will go?” is a completely reasonable question. (It’s also, come to think of it, a question with two meanings for many of the people I hope to talk to on this journey.) But I can’t give you a good answer.
I feel a bit like the Australian Aborigine who, submitting to the call of the “walkabout,” sets out on a moment’s notice and follows the invisible paths of his ancestors. These invisible paths are known to indigenous Australians as “Footprints of the Ancestors” or “Way of the Law.” To Europeans they are called “Dreaming Tracks” or “Songlines.”
The great traveler Bruce Chatwin wrote in a book called “The Songlines” that “wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song (of which we may, now and then, catch an echo).” Chatwin imagines that “these trails must reach back, in time and space, to an isolated pocket in the African savannah, where the First Man opening his mouth in defiance of the terrors that surrounded him, shouted the opening stanza of the World Song ‘I AM!’” This is the best description I have for the project. It’s not even mine, but it will suffice for now: we’ll be traveling along the songlines of American evangelicalism.
All this is to say, be patient, dear reader; stick with us. Hope with us that the details of the project will unfold as we submit to its momentum.
Number of Riders: 2*
Total Miles: 21.12
Average Speed: 12.5 mph
Max Speed: 33.0 mph
Total Trip Time: Approx. 3 hours 35 minutes
Total Riding Time: Approx. 1 hour 45 minutes
Time Spent Talking about Writing and Publishing with Long Lost Friend: 1 hour 20 minutes
Cinnamon Rolls from Fleur de Lis Bakery Consumed While Sitting in a Park with Long Lost Friend: 2
Mayor Sightings at Little Ride Bike Café: 1
Time the Two Riders Spent Lounging in John’s Front Yard Postponing the Butt-Kicking Ride to Dave’s House on Mt. Tabor: 30 minutes
Hills Conquered: 3
Hills Left Unconquered: 3
Calories Burned: 1250 (est.)
Fatigue Level: High
Books Bought at Garage Sale: 3**
Days Since Last Shower: 3
Body Odor Level: Extreme
Hours Until Next Ride: 15
* John Pattison and Dave Johnson
** Honey and Salt, by Carl Sandburg; The Cadence of Grass, by Thomas McGuane; The Wilderness World of John Muir, ed. by Edwin Way Teale
Filed under: Home, Posts by John, Preparation | Tags: Hipsters, Home, Portland, Powell's
Portland, OR ::
So this is unexpected.
Since moving to Portland in 2005 I have scrupulously avoided adopting certain styles and customs that might imply a desire to follow local conventions. The three characteristics that might identify me as a Portlander I have had since Fresno, which is the anti-Portland: beard, iBook, chunky glasses. While I do occasionally drink Pabst, in the last four years I have just said no to faux hawks, messenger bags, skinny jeans (this was best for everybody), The Smiths t-shirts, chains, sleeve tattoos, fedoras, Chuck Taylors, and mud wrestling. I have nothing against these things on principle – some of my best friends have flesh tunnels, ride fixies, go to pirate-themed parties, and are more likely to listen to Arcade Fire than, say, Willie Nelson. It’s just that I have this one particular neurosis: I can’t be perceived (and it is all about the perception) to be conforming. Accept me or don’t accept me, I’ll still wear my flip-flops and cargo shorts and brown t-shirt from the sushi bar in Chico. I’ll listen to Willie Nelson and ride my 21-gear bike.
It’s gross. I know.
But something interesting is happening. Now that Kate and I are leaving the city for a time, I have a strong desire to be recognized as a Portlander when we travel to Lincoln, Nebraska, and Dallas, Texas, and rural Mississippi, and Portland, Maine and everywhere in between. I want to go out and get t-shirts from all my favorite coffee shops, and plaster bumper stickers that say “People’s Republic of Portland” and “Powell’s Books” and “Support Native Oregon Beer (SNOB)” on my laptop. Tomorrow I am going to pick out new glasses and I am seriously (seriously) considering getting some of those oversized black glasses like Elvis Costello wore on the cover of This Year’s Model – Costello and the guy who used to work at the Belmont Stumptown.
Kate and I have spent a lot of the last 20 months planning ways to get out of the city. Now that we’re leaving, I want to bring it with me. Is that called home?
Filed under: Commonplace Book | Tags: Kathleen Norris, Liturgy, Portland, The Bible
This has been a year of weather extremes in Portland. Last winter the city was socked by snow and ice storms it didn’t have the money, equipment, personnel, or material (salt and sand) to deal with. Everything was shut down for days. We couldn’t get our car out of the cul-de-sac for a week – which was fine with me.
Last month, Portland came within a degree of breaking its all-time high temperature. I heard from someone that that day Portland was the third hottest place in the world, hotter even than Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Portland also came close to breaking its record for the most consecutive days over 100 degrees. The weather outside today is a relatively mild 83 degrees but it is humid and I am grumpy.
I’ve expended a lot of energy this year complaining about the weather. I know we don’t have it so bad – I’ve heard stories of heat in Phoenix so intense that it melts the pavement – but perspective is difficult for me on this. Mid-August is usually when I start to physically crave the rain, and this year especially so.
I’ve been reading Kathleen Norris’s latest book, “Acedia & Me.” In addition to being a personal, cultural, historical, spiritual and literary exploration of acedia – an uncommon enough word, meaning “absence of care,” that Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize it – this moving book recalls her marriage to the poet David Dwyer, his struggles with mental illness, and his death from cancer in 2003.
There is a passage in chapter six in which Norris remembers walking to visit her husband in a psychiatric ward on a day when it was so frigid that it hurt to breathe. As she cursed the cold and icy pavement under feet, she recalled the words of a canticle from the Sunday divine office. She was, she wrote, unaccountably consoled. “The words were now a part of me, and when I most needed them, the rhythms of my walking had stirred them up, to erode my anxiety and self-pity, and remind me that blessings may be found in all things.” All things, indeed.
I’m trying to commit the words from that canticle to memory. They are my second entry in my commonplace book.
Bless the Lord, winter cold and summer heat…
Bless the Lord, dews and falling snow…
Bless the Lord, nights and days…
Bless the Lord, light and darkness…
Bless the Lord, ice and cold…
Bless the Lord, frosts and snows;
sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever
(Daniel 3:45-50)
Americans need room to buy stuff Americans don’t need.
I read an article in last week’s New York Times Magazine about the movement to convert vacant retail space into churches, museums, libraries, schools, and other community spaces.
The article’s author, Rob Walker, quoted some statistics from a book called “Retrofitting Suburbia,” by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson. The statistics were somehow shocking but not at all surprising. In 1986, the United States had about 15 square feet of retail space per person in shopping centers. By 2003, that figure had increased by a third to 20 square feet. “The next countries on the list are Canada (13 square feet per person) and Australia (6.5 square feet).” The European country with the most retail space per person in shopping centers is Sweden, of course, at 3 square feet per person.
Interesting note: As of October 2008, Portland had the country’s fourth lowest level of retail space in shopping centers per person among major American cities, according to to this report with the ironic title from CoStar Advisors. At 14.43 square feet person (which is still huge), Portland comes in behind New York City (1.66 square feet), Long Island (9.3 square feet), and San Francisco (12.25 square feet). (The picture above is of Portland’s mall, the Lloyd Center.)
CoStar also calculated the total retail space per capita (shopping centers and everything else) for the 59 major markets. Those 59 markets have an estimated average of 43.71 square feet of retail space for every man, woman, and child in the city. Portland has the third lowest retail space per capita at 27.95 square feet, trailing Long Island and Charlotte. The market with the most retail space per capita is Southwest Florida at 74 square feet, followed by Richmod, Winston-Salem, Greenville, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Toledo, San Antonio, Jacksonville, and Birmingham.
This is a post about our priorities.
To make a life in Portland – that is, to settle in here, to give yourself over fully to the place – you have to submit to the weather. You have to make peace with the 222 cloudy days each year, and find a kind of pensive beauty in the nine months of rain. You must adapt to the rhythms and eccentricities of the weather, and learn that the rhythms of temperature and cloud-cover and precipitation are themselves eccentric – like the way the sun comes out at 3 p.m. nearly every day, but only for an hour.
These things are not easy to do. Business Week recently named Portland the “unhappiest city” in America due to its high rates of depression, divorce, and suicide (respectively ranked 1, 4, and 12 nationally). According to the magazine, the high levels of unhappiness are due at least in part to “lousy weather.”
I happen to love the weather here. As a kid, I was convinced that all great adventures begin in the rain. And so Portland awakens youthful dreams of thrilling deeds (mostly laid away in books), while satisfying my grown-up conception of rain as a metaphor for renewal (itself a great adventure) and serving as the set and soundtrack for my carefully-cultivated melancholy.
Kate, on the other hand, has a harder time of it. The rain and the clouds, the cold, hail, ice, and snowstorms are personal affronts against her. The lack of sunshine inflames her eczema (and Molly’s too). Raised in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, she grew up tromping through the forests; given a choice, she might prefer to live in a tent and cook over an open fire. The last 18 months have been especially gloomy in Portland, and Kate has been kept too much inside.
To thrive in Portland, you also learn that weather like we’ve had since last Sunday – sunny skies, temperatures fifteen degrees above average – is an absolute gift. I’ve spent the last few days riding my bike and walking, driving with the windows down, making the transition from jeans and hoodies to shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops. Kate, who hurt her foot running last week, has been homebound, but she spends hours each day in the garden, or playing with Molly in the front yard, or reading on the lawn chair. The weather returns to normal tomorrow, with a twenty degree drop in temperature, clouds, and even rain on Thursday. But at this moment, this morning, the sunrise through my living room window is a revelation, and the sky is so blue it must be received like a blessing.
Filed under: Writing | Tags: Media, New York Times, Portland, Relevant Magazine, Street Roots, Writing
Late last month, I wrote an article for Relevant about Street Roots, a Portland newspaper that is largely written, produced, and distributed by the poor and homeless. My article was too short – at 1,000 words it is less than one-third the length I had in mind when I initially pitched the idea. I am okay with how the article turned out, but I had to leave quite a bit of good stuff – ideas, interviews, and polished text – in a file labeled “Street Roots Scraps” on my computer desktop.
The New York Times, which frequently scans the Relevant website for my article ideas and to get a feel for what Christian twenty-somethings are caring about these days, picked up on the story and published an article on street papers in last Sunday’s edition.
Newspapers produced and sold by homeless people in dozens of American cities are flourishing even as the deepening recession endangers conventional newspapers. At many of them, circulation is growing, along with the sales forces dispatched to the sell the papers to passers-by.
The NYT article appeared in the business section and concentrated primarily on street papers and the new economy. My own article focused on the opportunities for personal transformation street newspapers offer their vendors.
What my article touched on only briefly, and the Times article failed to mention at all, is how street papers like Street Roots (and Street Sense in Washington and Real Change in Chicago) are changing the public discourse by offering a megaphone to those “who can’t afford free speech.” In Portland, for example, Street Roots has done an admirable job elucidating complicated issues like low-income housing, the plight of sex workers, and the city’s controversial sit-lie laws, which effectively criminalize homelessness, in a way that the mainstream media has been unwilling to do. This is an important element to the street paper model that I will address in more detail if I ever have a chance to write a longer article on the subject. That is, unless the New York Times gets to the story first.
I know you’re out there.
